Sloop-of-war

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Rating system of the Royal Navy

Ships of the line

First-rate Second-rate Third-rate
Frigates
Fourth-rate Fifth-rate Sixth-rate
Unrated
Sloop-of-war Gun-brig Cutter

In the 18th and the earlier part of the 19th centuries, a sloop-of-war was a small sailing warship with a single gun deck that carried between ten and eighteen cannons. A brig sloop had two masts and a ship sloop had three (since a brig is a two masted, square-rigged vessel and a ship a three- or more-masted square-rigger, though invariably of 3 only in that period). A ship sloop was generally the equivalent of a corvette (the French term for the same type, a name subsequently also applied to British vessels). A sloop-of-war was smaller than a sailing frigate and outside the rating system. In general, a sloop-of-war would be under the command of a master and commander rather than a fully commissioned or post captain.

A sloop-of-war was quite different from a civilian or mercantile sloop, which was a general term for a single masted vessel rigged like what we would today call a gaff cutter (but usually without the square topsails then carried by cutter-rigged vessels); some sloops of this other type nevertheless served in the 18th Century British Royal Navy, particularly on the Great Lakes of North America.

1 History
2 Notable sloops
3 Gallery
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

[edit] History

Successive generations of guns became larger in the second half of the 19th century and with the advent of steam-powered sloops, both paddle and screw, so by the 1880s even the most powerful warships had less than a dozen large calibre guns. In the Royal Navy, the sloop evolved into an un-rated vessel with a single gun deck and three masts, two square rigged and the aftermost fore-and-aft rigged (the corvette had three masts, all of which were square-rigged). Steam sloops had a transverse division of their lateral coal bunkers^[1] in order that the lower division could be emptied first, maintaining a level of protection afforded by the coal in the upper bunker division along the waterline.

During the First World War, the sloop rating was revived by the British Royal Navy for small warships not intended for fleet deployments. Examples include the Flower classes of "convoy sloops", those designed for convoy escort, and the Hunt classes of "minesweeping sloops", those intended for minesweeping duty.

The Royal Navy continued to build vessels rated as sloops during the interwar years. These sloops were small warships intended for colonial "gunboat diplomacy" deployments, surveying duties and to act during wartime as convoy escorts. As they were not intended to deploy with the fleet, sloops had a maximum speed of less than 20 knots. A number of such sloops, for example the Grimsby and Kingfisher classes, were built in the interwar years. Fleet minesweepers such as the Algerine class were rated as "minesweeping sloops". The Royal Navy officially dropped the term sloop in 1937, although the term remained in widespread and general use.

During the Second World War, 37 ships of the Black Swan class were built for convoy escort duties. However, the warship-standards construction and sophisticated armaments of the sloop did not lend themselves to mass production, and the sloop was supplanted by the corvette, and later the frigate, as the primary escort vessel of the Royal Navy. Built to mercantile standards and with (initially) simple armaments, these vessels, notably the Flower and River classes, were produced in large numbers for the Battle of the Atlantic. In 1948 the Royal Navy reclassified its remaining sloops and corvettes as frigates (even though the term sloop had been officially defunct for 9 years).

[edit] Notable sloops

Perhaps the most famous sloop was the HMS Resolution, in which Captain James Cook made his second and third Pacific voyages. Cook called the Resolution "the ship of my choice", and "the fittest for service of any I have seen."

In 1805 Lord Cochrane commanded the HMS Speedy, a brig-sloop of 14 guns, through a series of famous exploits in the Mediterranean. The Speedy served as the inspiration for the fictional Jack Aubrey's first command, the Sophie.

In 1949, HMS Amethyst, a Black Swan class sloop of the Royal Navy became involved in an international incident when she became trapped in the Yangtze River by Communist Chinese shore batteries. She made a famous escape on 30 July 1949, later turned into a feature film Yangtse Incident: The Story of HMS Amethyst .

The career of HMS Scarborough (1930's and World War II) is outlined in a separate article.

[edit] Gallery

USS Constellation, a United States Navy sloop-of-war

French steam corvette Dupleix (1856-1887)

HMS Amethyst, a Royal Navy Black Swan class sloop of World War II

HMS Cygnet, another Black Swan sloop

[edit] See also

Rating system of the Royal Navy
HMS Scarborough typical British World War II era sloop

[edit] References

^ War-Ships. A Text-Book on The Construction, Protection, Stability, Turning, etc., of War Vessels, E. L. Attwood M.Inst.N.A, Longmans Green and Co., 1910